Nothing can harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts.

At the bottom of great doubt lies great awakening. If you doubt fully, you will awaken fully.

By understanding emptiness, one understands all phenomena. Without understanding emptiness, one understands nothing.

Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.

Looking for peace is like looking for a turtle with a mustache: you won't be able to find it. But when your heart is ready, peace will come looking for you.

The path of practice moves from faith through understanding to direct realization.

The four foundations of mindfulness are not separate practices but different aspects of the same practice of clear awareness.

The teaching is simple: act with kindness and compassion. If you cannot do this, at least try not to harm others.

Every experience is an opportunity to practice awareness.

The movement of love is what creates the beauty in our lives.

This very body is the Buddha. And this very earth the lotus paradise.

Meditation in the midst of activity is a thousand times superior to meditation in stillness.

What we learn about the world is colored by the way we approach it.

Life is nothing but a continuous chain of sensations. Pleasant or unpleasant, observe them objectively.

The most important point is to accept yourself and stand on your two feet.

The path is the goal. Every step of the journey is the journey.

The essence of Buddhism is not a belief system but a systematic investigation of our experience.

Don't try to change the world. First, change yourself.

The practice of vipassana is the study of the self. When you study physical and mental phenomena, you are studying the truth about yourself.

The more you meditate, the more you understand yourself and the better friend you become to yourself.

Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that's all that's happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction. On the other hand, wretchedness--life's painful aspect--softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person.

The law of nature is the law of cause and effect. As you sow, so shall you reap.

To see the truth, do not be for or against. The struggle between for and against is the mind's worst disease.

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.

The object of meditation and the mind which knows it must be noted as they occur. If they are not noted, desire arises and disturbs concentration.

Each decision we make, each action we take, is born out of an intention.

The cultivation of loving-kindness is the thread that runs through all Buddhist teachings.

The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.

Whatever is happening is the path to enlightenment.

Both formerly and now, it is only suffering that I describe, and the cessation of suffering.

The quieter you become, the more you can hear.

We need to learn to let our emotions pass through us like waves, without getting caught in their undertow.

Mindfulness means keeping one's consciousness alive to the present reality.